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This post is going to be all about Principle #3: Make Peace With Food.

Making peace with food sounds a bit dramatic, eh? It’s just food right? But it is not uncommon for people with eating disorders as well as dieters to see food as the “enemy”. All the “bad” foods on their list become forbidden temptations, whereby willpower must “fight” the urge to “cave in”. When a dieter eats a “bad” food or breaks their diet rule, they feel they’ve lost the battle. They might think they didn’t fight hard enough, and may try again to resist breaking the rules. Dieters are constantly at war with food and themselves. So the only way to truly get out of the food battlefield is to make peace with it. ​What does that mean exactly? It means that you give yourself unconditional permission to eat ALL foods. Tribole and Resch (2012) breakdown even more what unconditional permission to eat means:

First, it means to stop labeling and believing that certain foods are “good” and certain foods are “bad”. What you eat has no moral basis, nor is any one food going to make you gain weight or lose weight.

Second, it means to allow yourself to eat what you really, truly want. Anything you want.

And third, it means allowing yourself to eat what you want without having to atone for it (e.g. "I’ll have dessert tonight, but I’ll work out longer tomorrow to make up for it").

Essentially, it’s about how to eat normally, and leaving the guilt, shame or any moral judgment about food behind.

Before I get into how to actually start making peace with food, it’s important to understand why this principle is so essential for getting out of the vicious dieting cycle. Two words: Rebound Eating.The Intuitive Eating principle that was discussed in part two, Honor Your Hunger, was all about the biological effects of depriving yourself of food. Making Peace With Food is about the psychological effects of depriving yourself of foods. In essence, if you rigidly restrict yourself from certain foods (often with the intention to lose weight), you will likely crave and obsess about those foods even more, as well as compulsively overeat them after a period of restriction. Overeating forbidden foods is one type of what’s called “rebound eating”, that dieters know all too well.

The compulsive tendency to overeat forbidden foods can take slightly different forms. For example, just thinking of, or the planning of going on a diet can trigger you to want to eat all the foods you know will be forbidden, even before starting the diet. This is called “Last Supper Eating”.“Tonight, I’m going to finish all the ice cream in the freezer and the cookies in the cupboards because starting tomorrow, I won’t be able to eat them”. Sound familiar?

Or how about when you’ve been dieting for a period of time, and one day you “break” one of your dieting rules and eat a forbidden food? As Tribole and Resch (2012) discuss, research has shown that when this happens to chronic dieters, it can easily trigger what’s called the “what-the-hell” effect. “I ate one cookie, and blew my diet (which is “bad”). I might as well eat the whole box!” This is also called the “counter-regulation effect”. You believe you broke a diet rule, so any restraint you had goes out the window, and thereby decide: “screw it! I might as well just keep eating all the “bad” foods!”

Why is it that a dieter can’t just eat a forbidden food and move on? Why can this rebound eating happen so easily? It’s all about psychology, which Tribole and Resch (2012) discuss as The Seesaw Syndrome of Deprivation vs. Guilt:

Imagine this: you have a seesaw with Deprivation on one side and Guilt on the other. When a dieter starts a new diet, they are often following a bunch a rules or meal plans, where certain foods are allowed and others are not. This alone sets up a dieter to already feel a sense of guilt, as food rules usually label foods as “bad” and “good”, thereby implicating a moral dilemma with eating.

But as a dieter is able to restrict the “bad” foods and follow the rules, their feelings of Guilt are low because they’re being “good”. But if following the rules means restricting foods they like, the feelings of Deprivation become high. So if a dieter believes they’ve been “good” for a while (i.e. their feelings of guilt are low), they may allow themselves to eat a “bad” food. But because this food is still considered “bad”, they may then start to feel some guilt about eating it. Which can then trigger the “what-the-hell-effect” and you eat all the foods you’ve been restricting.

As your Guilt rises for eating all the “bad” foods, maybe over a few days or weeks, your feelings of Deprivation fall. So now Guilt is high on the seesaw and Deprivation is low. Overcome with so much Guilt, you then decide to start the diet all over again, setting up rules for yourself- maybe even stricter rules this time - and the food Deprivation starts again. As you diet again and feel “successful”, the Guilt will lessen but the food Deprivation will rise, setting you up for another episode or period of rebound eating.

For chronic dieters, this seesaw effect just repeats itself over and over again. I think anyone who has ever dieted or even attempted to restrict foods can relate to this effect. But unfortunately dieters blame themselves for failing or breaking the food rules. Instead this is just a natural and normal psychological consequence of depriving yourself of foods you want to eat. And the way to get out of this Deprivation-Guilt cycle is to make peace with food. To give yourself unconditional permission to eat ANY food anytime you want.

For chronic dieters, this notion can seem kind of scary. That’s totally normal. You’ve been so used to following food rules for so long, and labeling your eating behaviours as “good” or “bad”, that the idea of giving yourself full permission to eat all foods -even the ones on your naughty list- may feel overwhelming or not even possible.

Tribole and Resch (2012) address some common reservations people might have about giving themselves unconditional permission to eat all foods:

“I won’t stop eating!!”If you give yourself permission to eat a forbidden food, you may at first compulsively overeat it. You may do this several times. But if you truly believe that you can eat this forbidden food again tomorrow and the next day, your obsession or feeling of urgency to eat it all now, will eventually go away. This is called habituation- the more you allow yourself to eat a forbidden food, the less appealing it becomes. This is not about “getting sick” of foods so you’ll never want to eat them again. That would be another form of restriction. This is about truly believing that you can eat dessert every night, or even for breakfast if you want. It’s about taking any moral charge out of food - making all food neutral. It’s making any forbidden foods on your list “legal” again. Whether you eat an apple or a piece of apple pie, you are not a morally superior or inferior person. There is no reason to feel guilty over eating any foods. And as discussed above, guilt just makes you want to eat more of the bad foods, not less.

“I’ve tried it before, but it didn’t work!”Maybe you’ve tried to give yourself permission to eat forbidden foods, but still ended in an overeating or binge episode. So you believe that it didn’t work, because you couldn’t control yourself around those foods. But usually this is a case of what’s called “pseudo-permission”. You only gave yourself temporary permission and you still believed you were breaking a diet rule. Even after one bite of the forbidden food, guilt still set in. So even if you physically allowed yourself to eat the food, you still mentally were depriving yourself. This is conditional permission, not unconditional permission.

“I won’t eat healthfully!” Maybe you’re afraid that if you give yourself unconditional permission to eat anything you want, you will always choose donuts over a salad. And it’s possible you might, for a short period of time. Depending on your level of food deprivation and how long you’ve been restricting yourself “bad” foods, you might go through a period of eating way more foods that are often considered “junky” or “treats” or “unhealthy” foods, as you begin to make peace with food. But overtime, if you continue to eat all foods unconditionally, you will also gravitate to eating more nutritious foods as well and be able to enjoy some “play foods” on the side. [Intuitive Eating calls less nutritious foods “play foods”, acknowledging that they may be less nutritious, but that there is still a place for them in any diet]. Intuitive Eating does address nutrition in principle #10 Gentle Nutrition, so I will address it more then. But for the sake of practicing unconditional permission to eat, thinking about nutrition and making “healthy” choices cannot be the focus, as that may keep you stuck in food rules and the Deprivation-Guilt Seesaw Syndrome. You have to let go of the rules even about “healthy” eating in order to practice Making Peace With Food.

“I don’t trust myself!” You believe that even the thought of letting yourself eat a forbidden food will send you spiraling out of control. If you’ve been in the restrict-overeat cycle for a while, it’s totally normal that you might feel like you can’t trust yourself around certain foods. Moreover, if you’ve been ignoring your hunger signals or was taught at a young age that you can’t be trusted around food (e.g. your parents put you on diets, your parents shamed you for eating too much), your sense of distrust with your body and food may run deep. So even though giving yourself unconditional permission to eat may feel very scary at first, or even for a while, know that if you keep at it, it will actually be one of the most healing things you can do to build trust again with yourself and food. Rebound eating happens because you believe you can’t eat a certain food or you don’t know when you’ll eat that food again and therefore you have to eat it all now. Making peace with food is about knowing, and fully believing, that you can eat any food, any time. By practicing this, you will begin to trust yourself more and more around all foods because all foods become neutral and you’ve disassociated your morality from food. No food is good or bad. Therefore whatever you eat does not make you a good or bad person. Therefore the act of eating itself, whatever the food, just becomes a neutral act. You’re in control again and you trust the choices you make around food, because they are based in self-care and well-being, not punishment or deprivation or morality.

OK, so how can you start practicing Make Peace With Food?Tribole and Resch (2012) outline five steps:

Make a list of foods you actually like, or that seem appealing to you. Include all foods, the ones you think are “good” and the ones you think are “bad”.

Check off the ones you are already eating and circle the ones you’ve been restricting yourself of.

Pick ONE of the foods you’ve circled and give yourself unconditional permission to eat it. If this feels a bit scary, I’d suggest starting with a food that you’ve been restricting, but maybe feels a little safer compared to another food that feels totally off-limits. And there are many ways you can eat this food: You could just go to the store and buy it. Or if eating it alone brings up anxiety, you could eat it with someone you trust, or order it at a restaurant. It can also be helpful to have something planned afterwards. Maybe it’s calling a friend, or doing some work, or going for a walk. Everyone will be different of what they need in order to feel safe when giving themselves permission to eat. So it will take some trial and error to find what works for you.

When you do actually eat the food, try to check in with yourself and notice if you actually even like the taste of it. Is it as good as you had anticipated? Sometimes dieters can build up forbidden foods so much in their mind, that when they actually eat them, it might not really be as amazing as they thought. So slow down a bit, actually taste what you’re eating and see if you actually enjoy it. If you do, then continue to practice giving yourself permission to eat it. Say to yourself that you can eat this again tomorrow if you want. Even all week, if you want. That it’s totally OK to eat it. Even if you don’t fully believe it, keep saying it to yourself.

Once you become used to eating a particular food that was once forbidden, but now you can mostly enjoy it, make sure to keep enough of that food in your home. I know, this goes against the dieting mentality of “out of sight, out of mind”, but if you continue to restrict certain foods in your home, it may induce rebound eating again. Knowing that there are foods you like to eat in your home and that you can have them at any time will build trust that you can be around any food and not lose control. Again, this may seem scary at first, so take your time with this one if needed. It’s also OK to just buy the forbidden food in smaller quantities, whether from the store or restaurant and work on keeping more of it around the house over time.

Repeat steps 1-5 as much as you need. Some dieters may have a very large list of forbidden foods. That’s OK. It’s common that once people start giving full permission to eat some foods, they will start to feel more confident and trust themselves around all foods. So you may not have to go through your whole list! But it’s important to keep practicing unconditional permission as much as you can. The more you practice, the easier it will become.

Also it’s important to note that before you start practicing Make Peace With Food, practice principle #2 : Honor Your Hunger, first. If you’re ravenous when you decide to eat your forbidden food, you will most likely overeat it due to biological hunger, which will just increase your feelings of out-of-control-ness. So make sure you’re feeding yourself enough first, because jumping into Make Peace With Food.

Finally, keep in mind that giving yourself unconditional permission to eat can be a very challenging process. It’s probably one of the hardest steps of Intuitive Eating for most people to grasp. So it’s also OK to work on the other principles first if Make Peace With Food seems too overwhelming.

I know when I first learned about Intuitive Eating, Make Peace With Food was the most intimidating principle and the one that actually turned me off of practicing Intuitive Eating for a while. I believed I was that person who just can’t control themselves around sweets, and who will just eat everything bad if I let myself eat even one bite of a forbidden food. I thought I would always be at war with food and that it was just normal to be at war with food, especially if I wanted to be “healthy” (a.k.a. thin). It was just impossible to conceive of any other way of being with food. And when I finally did allow myself to start going through my forbidden foods list, I did feel out of control, for YEARS.And the one thing that truly got me through and kept me going was also practicing self-compassion at the same time. If I felt guilty for eating a forbidden food, I “forgave myself” (even though I knew on some level I did nothing wrong, but it still felt like it due to years of restriction) and allowed myself to eat it again the next day, and the next day, and I kept going.

Now this is not to discourage you, it’s only to say that change can take time. And that being kind to yourself while practicing any change is sooo important. No need to add extra guilt and shame when you’re trying to get rid of the guilt and shame around food, right?

After learning more about Making Peace With Food, what do you think? What feelings come up for you?

​References Tribole, E. & Resch, E. (2012) Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press

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Author

Danielle Lithwick M.A., founder of Move Out Of Madness, delivers in-home personal training, online personal training and intuitive eating coaching, in Ottawa, ON and worldwide. And especially loves calisthenics training and carbs. Read more about her here. **This blog is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to replace medical advice. See full disclaimer here.